Is NBA Style Redefining Masculinity?

After Russell Westbrook and Memphis Grizzlies point guard Mike Conley both rocked all red everything to their Game 1 post game media sessions, a reporter excitedly asked Westbrook what he thought of their matching ideas. Westbrook replied "no comment," and knowing Westbrook's penchant for answering "clown questions" in the past, his response was tame. That it even was asked period, however, speaks to our present concern about the ways in which fashion and sport—especially basketball—are overlapping.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

For the last three seasons the NBA playoffs have become a de facto Fashion Week for men. Three seasons of discussion, of articles detailing their looks, and of people pushing back against it. It hasn't been about taking it up a notch, but recalibrating the entire format. That much change scares people. So naturally the fists come out.

Sooner or later one of these pieces of clothing will elicit a response from the firing squads. Writers, looking to create buzz, will go out of their way to editorialize their suspect opinions about fashion. Which is funny in its own regard since, as stylist Megan Ann Wilson (whose client list includes players on the Lakers and Bobcats) puts it, "not to show shade, but media people dress terrible with their khakis and polo shirts."

Others take to social media to proselytize, snickering, and posting pictures. The whole process is quite involved.

Style matters. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. We can't all be Albert Einstein, who famously wore grey suits all day, every day. How you present yourself to the world is a form of communication. It's a language like any other; we all know this, even if some pretend not to.

American men, with our steadfast dedication to machismo, attach ruggedness to sports stars more than anyone else. We expect certain behaviors. Clothing-wise, we want to see you in either athletic gear or suited up by Brooks Brother. That's it. You starting messing around with that, you mess with 'Murica.

In the past dudes like Joe Namath and Deion Sanders showed that it was possible to break the mold. It was never a wide spread thing though, only built for certain dudes whose brashness in clothing matched their overall personalities.

What's currently going on in the NBA isn't confined to a few guys. It seems half the league have become fans of labels such as Thom Browne and Hermès. The clothes are more tailored, the colors and fabrics more pronounced. There is now a concerted effort to delve into high fashion that just didn't exist in the past.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

While a large part of the public has embraced this, there's also been a negative response. It sounds something like, "Man, what the hell are these dudes wearing? Your man is out here looking like a straight bitch."

Everything can't be looked at through the prism of race, and people should be critical when it's overused as an evaluating construct. However, when black dudes are setting the parameters of high style, well, that's getting the treatment. Sorry, but not really.

It's not about the clothes really, more about masculinity and how it's defined. People are responding to the notion that the rules are changing.

It's hard to break down structures. They're built for a reason. Masculinity, in black America is most definitely a structure. One built out of granite, and the reasons it exists is important to understand.

When black Memphis sanitation workers went on strike in 1968, there was a reason that they protested using signs that said "I Am A Man." That was a counter to years of being called "boy" and having their position as men circumvented by discrimination. After generations of disrespect, it was their way of making it clear that respect was a prerequisite to any and all dealings henceforth. It continued a tradition of thinking that to be men, real legitimate men, you had to detach yourself from emotions. That in order to survive the blunt force trauma of racism certain things had to be learned.

It's what Bell Hooks meant in her classic bookWe Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, when she wrote, "Black male cool was defined by the ways in which black men confronted hardships of life without allowing their spirits to be ravaged. They took the pain of it and used it alchemically to turn the pain into gold. That burning process required high heat."

So again, to be a "man's man," you had to abide by certain rules. Things like toughness and emotional unavailability were the standards. Can't say I didn't learn those rules myself. Athletes, especially basketball players, have always occupied a revered place in conversations about manhood. That's why this current trend cuts so sharply. Instead of it being an interesting addendum to the game, it's constantly discussed as a failure of manhood.

One only needs to spend a few hours checking social media conversations after playoff games to see the explosive responses.

Every time a guy like Westbrook or Chris Bosh shows up at a game, the guns come out. Some of those memes are funny and both guys are easy target for sure, but there is an overboard factor. When you're sending out more pictures of Bosh and Westbrook than, say Zoe Saldana, it makes you wonder if something else is going on.

The question that always arises is "Who decides what is too far?"

"The players are men comfortable in pushing boundaries, a generation of young black men who are comfortable in who they are," says Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African and African-American Studies at Duke University. "I think it's important to get a full range of what a black man can be. Not just stern figures and disciplinarians, (but) where it's okay to be vulnerable. It speaks to the shift in our communities."

This shift is but a small battle in a bigger war. Stereotypical gender roles are changing in general. Women in the military, men who cherish parenthood, etc. Redefining manhood is going to take years, but issues like this are part of the process.

People constantly telling you what a man is or isn't deserve our skepticism. Some of those old rules need to die off anyway. Mostly because manhood isn't a one-size-fits-all thing, and the constant declarations, after a while, starts to sound foolish. We need smart people to figure this out, not fools.